Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Offers a Lesson on Iran that Must Be Heard!

“When you refuse to accept reality as it is, you can deny it. And this is precisely what the leaders of the West did. They dismissed the murderous Nazi rhetoric as internal German politics. They downplayed the seriousness of the danger of the military build-up of the Nazis, claiming that it was the result of the natural will of a proud nation, that it should be taken into consideration, that it should be accepted.” —Benjamin Netanyahu

“The fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It . . . doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power. And so the fact that the Supreme Leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.” —Barack Obama

An Important Message

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach spoke to congregants at Nessah Synagogue, the largest congregation of Persian Jews in America, as a warm-up to Ted Cruz, on August 1, 2015. But Rabbi Boteach’s message was important in its own right.

Religious Fraudsters with Beards

“This is one of the most famous Sabbaths of the year; it’s called Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Comfort,” Rabbi Boteach began. “God himself comforted the Jews. But what comfort is there today,” asked Boteach, “just 70 years after Jews were being slaughtered at a rate of 10,000 a day, when another annihilatory power is about to be embraced, by the world community, as a legitimate power? What comfort is there today, when a tiny little speck of Jewishness, called Israel, which is 1/650 the size of the Arab and Islamic states that surround it, is threatened continually with annihilation, by religious fraudsters with beards who dare to speak of ‘THOU SHALT MURDER’ in the name of God?”

“Today, we face a regime,” lamented Boteach, “that not only has subverted, and overturned, that simple teaching—but they believe that they honor God by spilling the blood of those that are not part of their faith. You know it all too well, BECAUSE YOU ESCAPED IT.” . . . You know it all too well, because you escaped that brutality. You escaped that barbarity. And God help all the poor Iranians who could not escape, who were shot in the streets!”

Do Not Murder

Rabbi Boteach continued: “When Neda Agha Soltan had a bead drawn on her heart, in the summer of 2009—with the bullet that pierced her heart—Time Magazine said it was the single most witnessed murder in the history of the world. And what did we do, when a Muslim woman was murdered, because she simply wanted to be free? We did absolutely nothing. Nothing!”

“My friends,” exclaimed Boteach, “in 1961, Israel brought the Architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, to Jerusalem for trial. Gideon Hausner was the Attorney General of Israel. And people asked him, ‘What was it like, for 147 days, to be in the same courtroom with the same monster who could orchestrate the murder of 1.5 million children? What was he like? Was he like Charles Manson? Did he carve swastikas into his forehead? Did he froth at the mouth? Did you see his claws?’ And Hausner said, ‘The scariest thing about Adolf Eichmann was that he was a completely normal human being. It was terrifying.’ ”

“How could you be normal and kill 6 million people?” questioned Boteach. “You see, my friends, it’s not that we read the Ten Commandments today. . . . [I]t was not the content of what was said 3,300 years ago [that was important]; it was the fact that GOD SAID IT. When the Nazis said, ‘Do not murder,’ they could interpret to whom it applied. ‘Do not murder a German’ [or] ‘Do not murder a human being.’ But a Jew is not a human being. A Jew is a subhuman, as is a Slav, as is a gay man. But when God said, ‘Do not murder,’ He meant: ‘Do not murder. It’s My law. Don’t interpret it.’ ”

Bad Behavior

Rabbi Boteach extended his narrative: “[President Obama] said, ‘My deal should not be judged on Iran’s bad behavior. It should be judged solely on whether it allows Iran to procure a nuclear weapon.’ And I shuddered, and I shivered, as I heard the Leader of the Free World say, ‘Do not judge my deal on whether I called out the Iranians and the barbarity of stoning women to death. Do not judge my deal on the barbarity of taking a gay man and hanging him from a construction crane in the streets. That has nothing to do with my negotiations with Iran. Judge it solely on whether they will blow up the whole world.’ And I said to myself, ‘God almighty! Has America lost its moral voice?’ We don’t object when people are killed? We call it ‘bad behavior’? Bad behavior is when my children don’t do their homework. . . . But, when you take a woman who was a devoted wife to a Muslim husband, and you falsely accuse her of adultery, and you dig her in a pit up to her shoulders, and you tell her sons that they will be the first to knock her brains out with a rock, that’s not bad behavior? That, my friends, is an abomination!”

A Still, Small Voice

“America is the light,” Boteach declared. “America is the great human hope. And if America doesn’t stand for freedom, who will? Tell me, my friends, how did stopping Iran become a Jewish issue? Where is the LGBT lobby to protest the murder of innocent gays? Where are the feminist organizations to object to the murder of women? Where are our Muslim brothers and sisters to stand up and say to Ayatollah Khamenei—who tweets that Israel has no solution but annihilation—[that] this is a disgrace to the Prophet Muhammad?”

“Through all that, my friends,” Boteach pressed onward, “through the deafening silence of the Iran’s brutality comes a still, small voice. . . . When God spoke at Sinai, he spoke with . . . a voice that was infinite and never-ending. What does an infinite voice sound like? The ancient rabbis say that an infinite voice is a voice that has no echo. God’s voice pierced the stone. It penetrated the rock. The world heard His message of morality. And all I hear today are echoes—the echo-ricocheting of Iranian bombs, and terrorism, and murder. And you can still, if you listen attentively, amidst the chaos, the mayhem—amidst the political circus which has been created to pass this bill which is a mortal danger to Israel and a significant threat to the American people—you can still hear that still, small voice. It is the voice of people like Senator Ted Cruz . . . who will stand up as our brother, as our friend, as our protector, because he believes in justice. . . .”

Understanding the Threat

“[W]e have rarely seen . . . a senator as courageous, as forthright, as dedicated, and as loving to our people as you have become, Senator Cruz. And you can see [the threat], from a community of Iranian Jews who saw the Iranian threat firsthand. . . . [T]hey saw it, because they had to leave their possessions behind, to escape before they became its victims. And now they look back, and they understand the level of the threat. They look to you, Senator Cruz, at a time when [the people of] Israel is once again being threatened with total annihilation. . . .”

“If President Obama . . .” persisted Boteach, “can criticize Senator Cruz and Mike Huckabee from Ethiopia, saying that their rhetoric is extreme, [then] okay, Mr. President, just show us a little bit of consistency. Senator Cruz’s rhetoric is extreme? Khamenei threatens to kill the Jews EVERY SINGLE DAY! And you never once, during the deal, said, ‘We’re going to refuse to negotiate until you STOP SAYING YOU ARE GOING TO KILL ALL THE JEWS!’ And . . . I will tell you why he did not say that. He didn’t say that because of fear that the slightest criticism of Iran—for its barbarity, and its anti-Semitism, and its THREATS OF A SECOND HOLOCAUST—would lead the Iranians to bolt the deal. . . . This deal is built on the most fragile of eggshells; it cannot stand . . . and that’s why we’re so privileged today, my friends, to hear a United States Senator speak with a different set of convictions.”

Boteach thanked Temple leaders for allowing his comments. Then he formally introduced Ted Cruz as “one of the most courageous and moral voices in the United States today.”

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About the author

Paul Dowling

Paul Dowling is an American patriot whose mission in life is to educate and enlighten his fellow citizens about the correct principles for facilitating a life of freedom and a culture based upon the Golden Rule, as well as to do whatever is in his power to help protect his countrymen from their government.